Faurest, Kristin: Ten spaces - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)
Szent István park
other cities — Amsterdam, for example, with its characteristic 17th century canal houses. Many of those — even the Anne Frank ffouse - would have been torn down in the 1950s but for the Stadtsherstel (city-restoration) group of businessmen and the eventual formation of the clumsily-named but highly-effective Municipal Department for the Preservation and Restoration of Monuments and Sites. Now more than 4,500 of the houses have been not only saved from demolition but also suitably restored. What if the other side had prevailed, and those thousands of skinny, crooked, canal houses, the very fabric of the city, had been demolished for something more practical? Szent István park This square belongs to that category of spaces designed with great care and detail in the context of a holistically-conceived housing complex and something of an idealistic world view. The park’s proximity to the river at one time made it a site favourable to industry. A mid-i9th century map shows the area across from Margit (Margaret) Island as being rich with factories, including the first Hungarian distilling company and the former royal brick factory. There were also the steam mills, including the Victoria, Erzsébet and the Pannónia. Szent István park itself was the former site of the Neuschloss parquet floor factory. The plots that constitute today's Szent István park and its environs were approved in 1933 by the city's council. Building regulations prescribed the house’s facade system, with its most elegant block being the Dunapark House (XIII. Pozsonyi út 38—42. Béla Hofstätter and Ferenc Domány, 1935—36). The complex around the park is a fine example of a newly-planned quarter meant for a new era, as imagined by the Board of Public Works and the several architects who planned it. The housing and the park were designed in the spirit of a health-conscious era, meant to be a large-scale, carefully- planned development. The blocks of flats — which were upscale and expensive from their inception — would be a stark departure from the largely Historicist or Eclectic style dwelling houses, or even the more modern Secessionist buildings that had dominated the cityscape up until that time. The new buildings would certainly exude a completely different atmosphere 56
